Desmos Marbleslides Challenge Set

This year, I'm trying something new with my students.  The idea came from a Desmos Fellow name Sean Sweeney.  His blog post does a great job explaining how this works; I invite you to read about his experiences with what he calls his Marbleslides Challenge Set.

Two weeks ago, my geometry classes had just finished our unit on parallel and perpendicular lines.  As part of that unit, I had students do the Desmos Marbleslides: Lines activity.  Students loved the activity and asked for more Marbleslides.  In response, I unleashed the challenge set to my students.  [At least the first three challenges.]

Each week I am unlocking one more challenge inside the activity.  This past week was an especially cool challenge, with the screen almost like a Plinko board.  I've had a number students find solutions and experiences the "Success!" found at the end of the Desmos rainbow.  And as a teacher, you know you're winning when students are begging for the next challenge to be unlocked.

I challenge you to read Sean's post and try the Desmos Marbleslides challenge out in your school.  Happy 'Slidin'!

NCTM Conference @ Orlando Reflection

I’m on my way back home from the NCTM Regional Conference in Orlando.  I had an awesome four days in Florida.  My brain feels somewhere between the consistency of oatmeal and Jello.  I need to get my thoughts recorded before I return home to four children and the responsibilities of real life.  [Update: I didn’t get the full post written before I returned home; the movies on the airplane stole my attention.]

I had initially planned on doing a running diary-like blog post of my experiences at the conference, but soon realized that there is too much info to consume to be continually writing and reflecting.  Instead, I give you my five biggest takeaways from my conference experience.

1.         Desmos is still a mystery to too many classroom teachers.

            Okay, not all of Desmos.  But the teacher activities found at teacher.desmos.com.  In the first session I attended on Thursday, Matt Vaudrey (The Classroom Chef) had participants pair up with a partner and play Polygraph.  I rotated around to four different people and asked each of them if they had heard of Desmos before.  Three of out four responded along the lines of “Yeah, my students and I use the calculator quite often.”  When I asked them about every using Polygraph before, all three responded “No” and had never been to the Desmos teacher site.  The fourth person had never used Desmos at all before.

            Overall, I counted seven sessions (out of about 260) that included Desmos in the title or the description.  Other session may have absolutely used Desmos as part of their presentations and simply didn’t include “Desmos” in the description.  Not all of the seven sessions necessarily used the Desmos teacher site.  I’m by no means advocating for Desmos to take over the conference.  However, I continue to be floored at how many teachers have no idea that the Desmos teacher site exists.

            When talking to some of my Desmos Fellow / MTBoS colleagues, I mentioned my surprise at the lack of knowledge about the teacher site.  One conjecture we made is that if you visit desmos.com there is a link to the teacher site, but the link doesn’t really “stick out”.  We felt as though flashing neon lights might help.  Another conjecture is that until textbook companies direct teachers to go to the teacher site, it will never reach all who really need to see it.  I’m curious about something… textbook companies like Pearson and CPM are now starting to embed Desmos activities into their curriculum.  I’m wondering if teachers using those resources are prompted to “Go to teacher.desmos.com, create a class code, etc” or if they simply are able to run the activity via a link found in their curriculum’s resources.

            Teachers need to be told about the Desmos teacher site and need to be guided through setting up their account, searching for & bookmarking activities, creating a class code, and using the teacher dashboard.  There is also a strong need for a session where the Activity Builder is demonstrated, and the Activity Builder Code is investigated.  Which brings me to…

2.         I feel really motivated to share with other teachers by speaking at conferences.

            One NCTM regional conference next fall is in Kansas City, which is less than 6 hours away from Brookings via car.  The deadline for proposals to speak is December 2^nd.  I’m going to apply to speak and I’m leaning toward my proposal being about the Desmos teacher site.

            This week, I prepared a number of proposals for sessions at the SDCTM conference in February.  My colleague & fellow Desmos Fellow Jarrod and I are also going to submit a proposal for an in-depth session at the TIE conference in April.  I’m also happy to be presenting a full day session on Desmos at the SDCTM Summer Symposium in July.

            Also this week, I gained a lot of confidence in my ability to speak on ideas and things happening in my classroom that are not connected to Desmos.  Resources such as Which One Doesn’t Belong?, Estimation 180, 3 ACT tasks, My Favorite No, and Padlet had their fingerprints in many sessions.  Manipulatives such as Algebra Tiles, Patty Paper, and GeoBoards were demonstrated as tools that help student develop conceptual understanding.  I regularly use all of these things in my classroom.  One of the session proposals I prepared for the SDCTM conference demonstrates a few of these resources.

3.         I have fresh ideas about how to improve what I’m doing in my classroom.

            Continual improvement is something I like to think I strive for.  I gained a lot of new ideas this week on things I can do to improve my craft.  A couple of ideas I’m hoping to implement soon are warm-up routines, tweaking my WODB a bit to make students think about a reason each one doesn’t belong, and using GIFs embedded into Desmos to help students visualize the intended mathematics (thanks, Jedidiah!).  Also, I was reminded that I need to take a long look at Mathalicious and Quizlet Live; both resources seem to have some pretty strong supplementary resources.

4.         TI and I are on a break.

            This takeaway needs its own blog post.  Coming soon…

5.         The online math community is powerful.

            I’m going to have to say that networking & collaborating was one of the highlights of my week.  It began before the conference even started while I was walking to the Wednesday keynote session.  I bumped into Sam Shah on my walk to the conference center.  He and I met this summer in San Francisco at the Desmos Fellows weekend.  He introduced me to two of his colleagues who were walking with him.

            Then in the keynote session, I happen to sit next to Tracy Johnston Zager.  Her and I have a number of short conversations as part of the interactive session.  Directly in front of us are Desmos Fellows Heather Kohn and Lisa Bejarano.  Heather had asked Lisa and I to present on the Global Math Department’s webinar back on September 19^th.  (Our session was titled “What’s New at Desmos?” and yes, Dan Meyer presented with us.  Due to Dan’s loyal followers, there were over 500 people trying to view the webinar.  We crashed the host server & were unable to effectively show what was new at Desmos.)  Heather and Lisa introduced me to #MTBoS faithful Hedge and Joel Bezaire.  Michael Fenton was one of the keynote speakers and I spoke with him briefly after his presentation. 

            The next two days, I run into Desmos Fellows Carl Oliver and Jedidiah Butler.  I chatted with Christopher Danielson about this “Math on a Stick” at the Minnesota State Fair.  I sat next to Kyle Pearce in a couple of different sessions.  I met Justin Aion and David Wees.  I caught up with David Barnes and Patrick Vannebush, both of who I met at NCTM Minneapolis back in 2015.  The list goes on…

Holding down the fort at the #MTBoS booth.

I’d strongly recommend attending an NCTM if you have the resources to do so.  SO.  MUCH.  COLLABORATION.  I feel extremely fortunate to be able to attend.  I want to say “Thank You” once again to Daktronics for supporting SDCTM and the SD Math Teacher of the YearAward.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll be presenting next fall in Kansas City.  Time to get working on the speaker proposal!

Math in the Real World: Student Created Memes

One of my overarching goals for my geometry classes is for students to realize we can find geometry nearly everywhere we look in our everyday lives.  Yes, most of my students can identify the corners of their walls as right angles, they understand the ceiling and floor represent planes, and they are cool with the idea that the rails on train tracks are parallel.  But what I want for students is for them to really see the geometry all around us and for them to begin to see things geometrically even when they're not trying to.

To help develop this habit of mind, I assign students the challenge of creating a meme.  Students must take a picture (searching in Google is not allowed) of something they see in their lives that relates to the geometry concepts we have learned about.  I give students a quick intro to the website addtext.com and set them free.  Students submit their memes on our class Padlet and are able to see the work of their classmates.

I plan to do this same assignment once a quarter.  Here are a few of my favorites from the first quarter.